The Verdict
Though this looks exactly like a Leone film and is heavily indebted to For a Few Dollars More it holds its own with the best Spaghettis. The epitome of the Italian revenge Western and one of Van Cleef’s finest.
Face to Face (1967)
Directed by: Sergio Sollima
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Gian Maria Volonte (Brad Fletcher), Tomas Milian (Beau Bennett), William Berger (Charley Siringo), Jolanda Modio (Maria),
Gianni Rizzo (Williams)
107 minutes
Story
Tubercular professor of history Brad Fletcher resigns from his post at a Boston university and heads West to convalesce. He inadvertently aids the escape of a notorious half-breed bandit, Beauregard Bennett, and finds himself drawn to the outlaw’s brutal, amoral life. So much so that when Beau reforms his old gang to terrorise the South-west once more, Brad joins them. Among Beau’s recruits is a newcomer named Charley Siringo, who isn’t a bandit but a lawman working for the Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. His mission is to track down Beau and break up the gang. Whilst they hide out with some renegades in the hills (where the locals fête Beau as a folk hero), Brad gradually loses his Eastern conscience and eventually is accepted into the gang. He undermines Beau’s leadership, but his first robbery, a bank hold-up in Willow Creek, is a chaotic failure – Siringo sells them out, the gang are wiped out and Beau is captured. Only Brad escapes unscathed.
Brad subsequently sets himself up in the outlaws’ hideout as a king and recruits a bigger, more brutal gang of ruffians. But the authorities send an army of vigilantes to wipe out the hideout for good. Beau escapes and rejoins Brad, but not before the outlaw community has been razed by the posse. Siringo intervenes and halts the vigilantes before they can kill Beau and Brad. Brad wounds Siringo, but Beau then kills Brad, before being allowed to go free by the lawman, who sees that Beau has changed. Beau Bennett the ruthless outlaw no longer exists.
Background
Following the success of The Big Gundown, Sollima went on to make this film, which he regards as his own personal favourite. The basic plot is incredibly similar to The Big Gundown’s (a bandit on the run with a lawman on his trail), but Face to Face is a more complex film. Often touted as a parable of the rise of Italian Fascism, Sollima denied this and said that the film was about the changes that can occur when different personalities are transposed to different environments (becoming civilised amongst civilised men, violent among the violent). Instead of concentrating on the relationship between the outlaw (Beau) and the lawman (Siringo), Sollima replaced the groups encountered by Cuchillo in The Big Gundown (the Mormons, the Widow’s henchmen, the monks) and had the outlaw on the run encounter an educated, cowardly professor (Brad). This culture shock forms the centre of the movie. Brad gradually learns how to be an outlaw, whilst Beau learns that there is more to life than robbing banks and killing lawmen.
The film also draws on many historical sources (the James Gang, the plight of the South following the Civil War) and seamlessly interweaves some important political and social observations (including the exploitation of the masses, the moral acceptability of war and the professor’s quest to ‘go down in history’) – again without setting the action in the Mexican Revolution. The film has shortcomings: it is far too talky and some of the peripheral characters are sketchily drawn, in sharp contrast with their equivalents in The Big Gundown. However, Ennio Morricone’s score is by turns fittingly moving and aptly vicious and the three leads are cast perfectly. Milian, with an Apache Indian-style haircut and buckskins, gives what many believe is his best Western performance, while Berger does an excellent job of the lawman, a part modelled on Lee Van Cleef’s Corbett. But the real revelation is Volonte, a stage actor, who had previously played Mexican bandits in the first two Dollars films and Damiani’s A Bullet for the General. Here, as the suave but naïve Easterner-out-West, he injects pathos and depth into a performance that could easily have been highly unconvincing. Sollima’s vision is unique and the epic sweep of the film transcends Spaghetti Westerns of the time – especially in the last quarter of the film, when the vigilantes are let loose on the outlaws’ hideout. And as well as the philosophising about education, death, morality and trust, there are plenty of gunfights to please the shoot-‘em-up fans. The failed heist is an excellently choreographed street fight (akin to the James Gang’s Northfield bank raid) and the finale is a familiar Leone-esque three-way shootout. As is usual with Sollima’s Westerns, beware the abridged version, which lost 15 minutes of footage, a couple of showdowns and quite a large chunk of Beau and Brad’s relationship.
The Verdict
The confrontation between the pistol and the mind makes this a Spaghetti Western with brains, even if they are sometimes splattered over the screen.
The Big Silence (1967)
Directed by: Sergio Corbucci
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant (Silence), Klaus Kinski (Loco), Vonetta
McGee (Pauline Middleton), Luigi Pistilli (Henry Pollicut)
100 minutes
Story
In the snowy wastes of Utah, outlaws hide in the mountains to avoid being captured by a vicious gang of bounty hunters led by Loco. When a local woman, Pauline, loses her husband to Loco’s band, she sends for Silence, a mute gunfighter who defends outlaws against Loco’s tyranny. When Silence arrives in the town of Snow Hill, he also has a score to settle with the crooked justice of the peace, Pollicut, the man responsible for him being mute – when Silence was a child, his parents were killed and, because he was a witness, he had his throat slit, rendering him speechless. Silence shoots off one of Pollicut’s thumbs, so he can’t fire a pistol. In retribution, Pollicut hires Loco to kill Silence, but, in a shootout, Loco’s gang is decimated. Silence is wounded, then nursed back to health by Pauline. Later, Pollicut cripples Silence’s hands, at the cost of his own life, while Loco captures the outlaws from the hills. In the final showdown, Silence attempts to save the outlaws, but he and Pauline are callously shot down by Loco and his men, who then turn on the outlaws and massacre them.
Background
Drawing on influences such as André de Toth’s stark Day of the Outlaw (1959) and Mario Bava’s snowy ‘Wurdalak’ episode of Black Sabbath (1963), The Big Silence (also released as The Great Silence) is one of the most beautiful and imaginative Spaghetti Westerns, though it is also the most downbeat. Even Corbucci’s own bleak movies hadn’t gone as far as letting the villains win, but that is what happens here. Instead of the muddy town of Django, Snow Hill is a desolate, snowbound place, suspended in clouds of fog, where vicious bounty hunters run the show – a poke by Corbucci at Leone’s heroic bounty killers. The film echoes A Fistful of Dollars (in the intergang conflict between the outlaws and the bounty hunters) and Django (with the revenge subplot and the love story between Silence and Pauline), but the thought that went into its execution transcends the genre. With Morricone’s delicate, plaintive score (the antithesis of his Dollars music) echoing the falling snow, the film unfolds in classic style.
French star Trintignant is perfect as the mute avenger, Silence, wrapped up against the cruel winter and armed with a rapid-firing Mauser machine-pistol, with detachable shoulder stock – a flashy variation of Django’s machinegun. Pistilli is equally effective as the jumpy, thumbless justice of the peace, a nasty racist who was responsible for Silence’s silence. Vonetta McGee’s touching portrayal adds depth to the hopeless love affair that develops during Silence’s convalescence. But it is Kinski, as the villainous bounty hunter Loco, who walks away with the movie. His shrouded face looks like a horror-movie grotesque, as he seeks out his prey, stalking in a winter wonderland. It is his best Western performance and one of the finest of his career, his more critically acclaimed work for Werner Herzog included. He guns down starving outlaws with barely concealed relish and then packs their bodies in ice to be transported on the roof of the stagecoach. By chance, Loco (ca
lled Tigrero or ‘The Tiger’ in the Italian version) and Silence begin the film sharing a stagecoach ride to Snow Hill and, though the conversation is a little one-sided, it sets the central antagonism up perfectly, as the coach winds its way through the beautiful snowscape (filmed at Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy).
The violent action sequences are amongst the best Corbucci staged. But the horror of the flashback (where Silence as a boy has his throat slit) and the moment when Pollicut has his thumb shot off contrast well with the unusual explicitness of Silence and Pauline’s love for one another, the most impressive depiction of love in a Corbucci Western. The director’s powerful imagery – including blood dripping on the snow from corpses’ wounds, the rag-clothed scythe-carrying outlaws (who haunt the hills and feast on dead horses), a man drowned in a frozen lake (plunging through the ice to his death) and Silence’s long, silent scream when his hands are scorched on open coals – propels this film from the relative cheapness of Corbucci’s previous efforts, Django and Navajo Joe, and into Leone’s league. And the nihilistic finale lives long in the memory – a moment when a man has to do what a man has to do, over and above love, the odds and all reasonable logic.
Though not especially influential within the genre as a whole (a few other films picked up on the snowbound locale), it is the most influential Spaghetti (outside of the Dollars films) with regard to Clint Eastwood’s career back in American Westerns. Ideas, props and whole scenes appear unchanged in Hang ’Em High (1967), Joe Kidd (1972) and Unforgiven (1992), films that were often praised for their originality. Such is Corbucci’s hidden legacy.
The Verdict
Silence was golden at the European box office, but, like Django, the film wasn’t released in Britain or the US – the ending was too pessimistic for their audiences’ sensibilities. That is The Big Silence’s power – a kick in the teeth, when other directors gave their fans a reassuring lift. But which technique is most effective? Snow contest.
Day of Anger (1967)
Directed by: Tonino Valerii
Music by: Riz Ortolani
Cast: Lee Van Cleef (Frank Talby), Giuliano Gemma (Scott Mary),
Walter Rilla (Murph), Al Mulock (Wild Jack)
110 minutes
Story
In Clifton City, orphan Scott Mary is victimised by the townspeople. When ageing outlaw Frank Talby rides into town, Scott sees the opportunity to break free from their oppression and teams up with the gunman, who educates him as a shootist. Talby, recently released from jail, meets with his old partner Wild Jack, who owes him the takings from their last robbery in Abilene. Jack says he doesn’t have the loot as he was double-crossed by his associates, who were all respectable men from Clifton – the judge, the saloon-keeper, the banker and an army officer. Now they have the cash. Talby kills Jack and returns with Scott to Clifton to exact his revenge. They blackmail the various dignitaries and set themselves up as rich, influential men. But as Talby goes power-crazy, Scott comes into conflict with his only friend in town, Murph an ex-sheriff with a score to settle with Talby. Eventually Scott faces Talby, after Talby has killed Murph in cold blood. In a showdown, Scott defeats Talby and his cronies using the lessons that Talby once taught him.
Background
A formula Van Cleef vehicle with all the necessary ingredients – Van Cleef rides into town, gets double-crossed, gets nasty and gets his revenge, with the added twist that he gets killed for his trouble. While Clint Eastwood returned to the States to pursue a career in his native land, Van Cleef became the number-one star of Spaghetti Westerns on the continent. For his fifth he was yet again involved in a film that drew heavily on the plot and characters of For a Few Dollars More (his Italian debut in 1965). Van Cleef reprised his role of an ageing gunman hooked up with a younger sidekick (this time Giuliano Gemma), except that now their relationship was that of master gunman and protégé. As in Death Rides a Horse (1967), Van Cleef and his partner find themselves against a bunch of outlaws now deemed honest citizens as a result of their crimes, but, in a slight plot twist, Van Cleef sets about blackmailing them into submission. Unfortunately, as each man outlives his usefulness, Van Cleef kills him, until he is the town tyrant, forcing a confrontation with his young partner.
Gemma’s characterisation of Scott, the orphan (reduced in the film’s opening to collecting barrels of shit from the local businesses, in a primitive form of effluent recycling), adds a new dimension to the action. He is ostensibly a good guy who, under Talby’s guidance, becomes a lethal hired gun. Throughout the film, Talby teaches Scott a series of lessons (the ‘rules of the game’), before turning him loose against the town he hates. By the end, Scott’s conscience tells him to side with his elderly guardian Murph – an honourable man. This conflict between good and evil is the centre of the film.
Day of Anger was directed by Valerii, who began as assistant to Leone on the first two Dollars films. He then directed an excellent bounty hunter Western, For the Taste of Killing (1966), which reused sets and ideas from Leone’s For a Few Dollars More – a trend that continued with Day of Anger. The score by Riz Ortolani is a jangly, jazzy workout that bears little resemblance to Morricone’s scores, while the performances (especially Gemma and Al Mulock from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) are pretty convincing.
The Verdict
If possible, see the uncut 110-minute version (issued on DVD by Wild East Productions), as the video releases (as Days of Wrath and Gunlaw) are missing 20 minutes of footage, including much violence and character development. This abridged version looks like an excuse for Van Cleef to mow down the population of a town, while the full version tells you why.
Cemetery Without Crosses (1968)
Directed by: Robert Hossein
Music by: André Hossein
Cast: Michele Mercier (Maria Caine), Robert Hossein (Manuel), Lee
Burton (Thomas Caine), Daniele Vargas (Rogers), Serge Marquand (Larry Rogers), Michel Lemoine (Eli Caine)
88 minutes
Story
A bitter range war between the Rogers and Caine clans culminates in the Rogers’ lynching Ben Caine for stealing gold from them. Seeking revenge, Ben’s wife Maria hires left-handed gun Manuel to kill her husband’s murderers when Ben’s brothers, Thomas and Eli, won’t help. Manuel infiltrates the Rogers ranch and kidnaps Pa Rogers’ daughter Diana, taking her to his ghost town hideaway. Maria bargains with the Rogers and forces them to give Ben a proper funeral in town, with the Rogers as chief mourners, but, in the meantime, the Caine brothers have savagely assaulted Diana. The Rogers capture Thomas and Eli and try to convince them to return Diana, but Manuel won’t budge: he shoots Thomas, then Eli is executed by the Rogers in town. Manuel returns Diana to the Rogers’ ranch, but it’s too late. The Rogers have killed Maria and wait at the ghost town for Manuel. In a shootout, Manuel kills Pa Rogers and his three sons, but Diana arrives and takes revenge on Manuel, gunning down the now unarmed man in the street.
Background
Cemetery Without Crosses (also called A Rope, a Colt) is, like The Big Silence, a French-Italian co-production, this time directed by and starring Robert Hossein, who is excellent in the role of Manuel. An indolent, cool professional, who lives in the ruined saloon of a long-abandoned ghost town, Manuel dons one black glove before each gunfight to fire his pistol, like Jack Palance in Shane (1953). Michele Mercier, as widow Maria, equals Vonetta McGee in Silence, another woman who is forced to hire a gunman to avenge her husband – here Maria is in love with Manuel and the two plan to leave together before the tragic dénouement. The film was shot from January to March 1968, on location in the sierras and deserts of Almeria, so familiar from Leone’s Westerns – ‘The land where the rope and the colt are king’, as the title song has it. The film’s dusty costuming and authentic wooden interior sets look to have influenced Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, shot in Almeria shortly after. A strong cast includes stuntman Benito Stefanelli as Maria’s husband Ben, Serge Marquand as villainous Larry Rogers (he was e
qually good in Ferroni’s Wanted and Corbucci’s The Specialists [1969]), Lee Burton as Thomas Caine, Michel Lemoine as his brother Eli, Pierre Collet as an ineffectual sheriff, and a host of Leone and Corbucci supporting players in small roles: Stefanelli, Lorenzo Robledo and Luigi Ciavarro went on to appear in Once Upon a Time.
Cemetery Without Crosses also benefits from a great score by Hossein’s brother André and a groovy theme song, ‘A Rope and a Colt’ (complete with ‘doo-wah, doo-wah’ backing singers), voiced by Scott Walker of Walker Brothers fame. The .45 single of this was backed by Hossein’s ‘Concerto Pour Guitar’ (heavily influenced by the ‘Adagio’ from Rodrigo’s ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’). The film’s scenario (co-written by future horror-film director Dario Argento) is meticulously plotted, the terse script not wasting a word, as Manuel puts his plan into operation and sets about destroying the Rogers clan from within. In this respect, the film is almost an existential Spaghetti Western, the melancholy, emotional atmosphere riven with a grim inevitability, as it creeps towards its bleak conclusion – an atmosphere it shares with the best of sixties French cinema, especially Le Samouraï (1967).
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